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The Evolution of Open-Source Science

In this video I will analyze the Open-Source Science paradigm and the cultural atmosphere surrounding it. Generally speaking, Open-Source Science is a movement meant to smoke the scientific community out from its Ivory Tower. It is about moving science into a conceptual frontier devoid of ideological prejudice, extremism, and ego. This means courageously venturing wherever the evidence may lead us. Sacred cows have no place here. Like all Open-Source efforts, it is a bold attempt to conquer dishonorable and compartmentalized operating-systems. This is accomplished through a holistic approach that weeds out contradiction by stressing ethical evidence-based decision making.

Cultivating the Open-Source Science paradigm is a major step towards bringing forth the emergence of an enlightened World Brain. This entails the creation of numerous Open-Source journals and databases that allow quick and easy access for both the technically minded and the layman. It means expanding the notion of public participation through forums and Wiki-based projects. It includes making out-of-the-box scientific research available for widespread constructive analysis, while at the same time protecting innovators against intellectual theft through such Open-Source copyright measures as Creative Commons. Last but not least, it means ditching ad hominem critique as we move forward.

This shift is necessary because contemporary science, by and large, has devolved into nothing more than another bankrupt belief system; a substitute religion for individuals who believe spiritual fundamentalism is somehow more dangerous and damaging than scientific fundamentalism. In the words of Terence McKenna, “Science has great pretentions about itself; it basically regards itself as a meta-theory capable of passing judgment on all other theories. [These theories] are supposed to submit themselves to science to be told whether they are right or not.”

As Rupert Sheldrake, an accomplished biochemist, points out: “There is a kind of materialist ethos in science…when cosmologists come up with the idea that there are multiple universes, billions of actual universes besides our own for which there’s no evidence at all, instead of this causing outrage, it becomes totally mainstream…no one suffers an attack as a result…The reason that gets past the filters is it doesn’t overturn a particular ideology. What’s at stake is not science itself but ideology.”

This entrenched dogmatism that McKenna and Sheldrake refer to is most noticeable in scientists such as Richard Dawkins, who consistently scapegoat supernatural belief for the world’s shortcomings. They outright ignore the more decisive role that egotism, disconnection, and self-deception have played in perpetuating strife. Despite possessing tremendous intellect, Dawkins and others like him are clearly mistaking the map for the terrain. It is of little consequence to them that atrocities committed by Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia were carried out under an empirical regime guided by a cold, calculated scientific protocol. They cannot sense, let alone acknowledge, their own cognitive dissonance. What is worse, without much thought, we choose to place these people and the flawed belief systems they espouse on pedestals. We elevate them to positions of cultural prominence, and mistakenly label their ideas as worthy of organizing an entire social-order around. We conflate their intelligence with wisdom at our own peril.

We need to realize that this brand of self-defeating extremism, whether scientific or religious, is a byproduct of a deeply flawed cultural psyche. We have become alienated from nature, from ourselves, and in the process become totally deranged. Consequently we adopt surrogate personalities steeped in cheap bravado and pointless rigidity. As Philip K Dick wrote, “Something has gone wrong…we can’t read outside and can’t hear inside. So I say we have become idiots…the origin of the word idiot is the word private. Each of us has become private and no longer shares the thought of the [World] Brain…thus our real life and purpose is conducted below our threshold of consciousness.”

At its roots, science was meant to serve as a method of systematic and open-minded inquiry. An ethical process for discovering what we wish to know through utilization of the scientific method. Unfortunately science has long since descended into a reductionist ideology driven by fevered egos and shills. Institutionalized science has become a stubborn and venomous beast bloated by its own vanity and self-aggrandizement. It believes its premises are consistent and correct at a base level; that the numerous paradoxes and contradictions arising within its models are reconcilable given enough time, money, and so on. It views the Universe as a Newtonian machine composed of inert matter; a machine that we, as supposedly Cartesian entities, can take apart piece by piece, put back together again, and come to definitive conclusions about. This is the fundamentalism and mythological narrative lying at the heart of bureaucratized Science today.

The modern, materialist mindset originated in the 17th century, and has since come to characterize all the major fields including physics, biology, medicine, and psychology. Unbeknownst to many, Rennes Descartes, one of classical science’s founding fathers, was visited by an angel in the night who told him “The conquest of nature is to be achieved through number and measurement.” Descartes would take this revelation to heart, and translate his mystical experience into a school of thought obsessed with metrics, measure, and objective dualism.

The work of Isaac Newton would further crystallize these ideas within popular culture. In his seminal work Principia Mathematica he postulated that the world operates by and large as a machine governed by immutable and predictable laws such as gravitational force. There was no interconnectedness in this world. All bodies were inherently isolated, and interaction between objects was governed by local causation. Predictably, man also became seen as a machine ruled and isolated by indifferent physical processes. This closed-system mentality later produced a generation of scientists who would characterize
the Universe as inherently entropic; that we are collectively moving toward an inevitable state of decay and disorder. Energy could never be created or multiplied in such a universe; only dissipated, and at best conserved. By aligning itself in stark opposition to the spiritual establishment of its day, the new science popularized the notion of a meaningless existence.

Charles Darwin and his theory of biological evolution based on randomness and survival of the fittest would arrive on the scene in the 19th century. It should not be ignored that Charles Darwin was a very wealthy man who often kept company with the mercantile power-brokers of his day. These very people controlled the scientific societies, and did not promote ideas they did not like. Arguably, the success of Darwin’s theories had a lot to do with the social circles he ran in. His concepts fit conveniently into the elite’s exploitative paradigm of turning human-beings into human-resources. It would appear this is why principles of Darwinian evolution have had such historical staying power.

While evidence supporting the general notion of evolutionary process is obvious, what drives and shapes this phenomenon is highly debatable. I find it unfortunate nobody acknowledges men like Alfred Russell Wallace, Darwin’s contemporary, who promoted an egalitarian economic order, openly disdained the rich, and promoted an alternative theory that stressed cooperation and mutual exchange among species as the main drivers of biological evolution. Modern-day renegades like Rupert Sheldrake have met with similar obscurity by espousing more purpose-driven models of evolution like Morphogenetic Resonance.

Just as it was in Darwin’s day, political and economic interests continue to taint the world of science and hinder the organic path of collective progress. Just as conservative and moneyed interests have bought world governments, they have bought the scientific establishment as well. Most scientists within it cannot perceive the corrupt environment that surrounds them. Cynics and ladder-climbers who do perceive it simply do not care. University professors and researchers are slaves to grants, and almost nobody gets ample economic support by postulating radical ideas. Mainstream scientific journals, such as Nature Magazine, have also been co-opted by a small cadre of establishment funders, and many chief-editors are put in place to act as henchmen for the status quo as they cynically label anything threatening as pseudo-science. Science is no longer an independent realm of inquiry devoted to solving the greatest conundrums facing mankind and the planet. Like politics, it has become a bought-and-paid-for enterprise. As theoretical physicist Tom Bearden has put it, “Science has a history of suppression. The worst enemy of science is organized science itself.”

Most subscribers of the closed-system paradigm dismiss alternative scientific theories out of hand, and label their subscribers as silly, stupid, or at worst charlatans. When strange yet convincing experimental results surface, and character assassination fails, they simply say the experimental procedure itself must have been flawed. As a last gasp, if they are still unable to muddy the water, they take the stance of critics like Richard Wiseman, a notable parapsychology skeptic. Mr. Wiseman is quoted as saying, “I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven. That begs the question do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal?” So it would seem there is no convincing these types of people no matter what. It does not matter if such things as paranormal phenomena have been proven, as Wiseman himself states, “by the standards of any other area of science”. Obviously, truth has no relevance to the inauthentic.

Thankfully, no matter how concerted the denial effort, this ethical-logjam cannot persist for much longer in the face of a whole variety of irreconcilable quandaries currently plaguing the mainstream scientific world. Early in the 20th century, Einstein’s relativity theory certainly brought a number of widely-held scientific notions into question. But his ideas were not radical enough to initiate a shift in mass consciousness and an overturning of the establishment. The public at large still had no compelling reason to completely re-conceptualize their very existence.

Since then, Quantum Physics has proven that non-locality, so called action at a distance, rather than Newtonian local causation, is the prime mover of interaction in the Universe. Entanglement, the interconnectedness of all matter, has also been rigorously proven. Quantum Biology has demonstrated that these spooky principles extend to macroscopic organisms as well. Living creatures, similar to subatomic particles, are in a constant exchange with the Zero-Point Energy Field. Non-Linear Thermodynamics, pioneered by Nobel Prize winner Ilya Prigogine, illustrates that contrary to the entropic world-view, order does in fact emerge out of chaotic systems far from equilibrium. Beside this, Systems Theory has succeeded in showing scientists how to think holistically and integrate principles from a number of disciplines into unified theories. What might be most exciting is that a small but devoted contingent of engineers are presently taking an interdisciplinary approach and manufacturing technologies that extract copious amounts of energy from the quantum vacuum. These technologies are clean, powerful, and have the potential to reverse ecological damage caused by our antiquated dinosaur tech.

I see it as rather obvious that we are not separate from our environment, nor separate from one another. We exist in an open super system woven together by quantum potentials. In the new age of Open-Source Science, it is being demonstrated that waveforms created by our thoughts and emotions, like boats on an open ocean, create interference patterns that propagate throughout the Universe. They become imprinted, never dissipate, and inform both the present and the future as we evolve toward a state of increasing order and coherence. However, we mustn’t forget that solving world crises is not purely an issue of mind over matter. We must be careful not to indulge in the superficial delusions of The Secret. There is still a dire need for direct action and on-the-ground contribution. We must adopt a holistic approach when attempting to effect change. We must avoid compartmentalized thinking at all costs.

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3 comments

Origin of life and its evolution are the result of action of laws of hierarchical thermodynamics.

Criterion of evolution

The approval about the reduction of the entropy of living systems as a result of biological evolution is incorrect. The criterion of evolution of living system is the change (during evolution) of the specific free energy (Gibbs function, G) of this living system. The evolution of living system takes place against the background of flows of energy (e.g., light, energy of physical fields) from the environment. It increases its specific free energy. At the same time, the specific free energy of this living system is decreased as a result of spontaneous processes in this system.
Thus, the total change in the specific free energy of a living system is composed of two parts: 1. The change of free energy due to the inflow of external energy (G1> 0) and 2. The change of free energy due to spontaneous transformations in the system (G2 < 0) . The evolving system constantly adapts to a changing environment. The principle of substance stability contributes to this adaptation.
Thermodynamics of evolution obeys the generalized equation of Gibbs (that is the generalized equation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics)*. Biological evolution and the processes of origin of life are well described by the hierarchical thermodynamics, established on the firm foundation of theory of JW Gibbs. Our theory created without the notion on dissipative structures of I. Prigogine and negentropy of L. Boltzmann and E. Schrodinger.
“Thermodynamics serves as a basis for optimal solutions of the tasks of physiology, which are solved by organisms in the characteristic process of life: evolution, development, homeostasis, and adaptation. It is stated that the quasi-equilibrium thermodynamics of quasi-closed complex systems serves as an impetus of evolution, functions, and activities of all levels of biological systems’ organization. This fact predetermines the use of Gibbs’ methods and leads to a hierarchical thermodynamics in all spheres of physiology. The interaction of structurally related levels and sub-levels of biological systems is determined by the thermodynamic principle of substance stability. Thus, life is accompanied by a thermodynamic optimization of physiological functions of biological systems. Living matter, while functioning and evolving, seeks the minimum of specific Gibbs free energy of structure formation at all levels. The spontaneous search of this minimum takes place with participation of not only spontaneous, but also non-spontaneous processes, initiated by the surrounding environment.”
Works of the author: http://endeav.net/news.htmlhttp://gladyshevevolution.wordpress.com/http://www.mdpi.org/ijms/papers/i7030098.pdfhttp://ru.scribd.com/doc/87069230/Report-Ok-16-11-2011

Thank you for your intelligible and in-depth commentary on my video essay. I appreciate a professional such as yourself taking the time to evaluate and comment on it. I will look closer into your papers in the near future, and if not bothersome to you, I’d be happy to have an e-mail exchange with you about them. All the best to you.